Facebook Unveils New Penalties on Its Groups in Wake of Capitol Riot

Groups forums are often private, but can attract millions of users. Facebook has heavily promoted them to users, and more than half of the platform’s 2.8 billion monthly active users belong to at least five.

The company also will stop recommending political and health-related groups to countries outside of the U.S. It currently only restricts such recommendations to U.S. users.

The penalties formalize some of the restrictions placed on the product in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack.

“We’re trying to look at instances where administrators are trying to create unhealthy groups,” Mr. Alison said.

The changes come after internal Facebook research found that Facebook Groups had been widely used to promote election-related conspiracies such as the “Stop the Steal” effort that preceded the Capitol riot.

Other social networks have been cracking down on misinformation on their platform. Twitter Inc. TWTR -0.27% has introduced a strike system that penalizes users who post misleading information on such topics like the Covid-19 vaccine and election integrity.

Facebook recently concluded that some of its largest civic-based Groups were toxic and was alarmed by their growth, according to Internal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Write to Jeff Horwitz at [email protected]